on the homefront

Thus endeth January; on to February.  The first month of 2025 was pretty dry snow-wise, actually, and when the first storm of February made its presence known, everyone got pretty excited about it.  They were thinking up to two feet in the Cottonwoods and 2-4 feet in the mountains north of I-80.  I'm not going to say it was entirely a bust, but Alta only got 16 inches of heavy, wet snow, and then some rain on top of that.  Not ideal.

"Where's the snow at?" Milton, probably

On Saturday, H was at the bus stop for his usual 6:30 a.m. bus.  He couldn't get on it as it was full by the time it rolled up; he couldn't get on the next one either.  So he came home, at first thinking that maybe he'd wait a couple of hours and go up mid-morning.  But then inertia took over and he gave up for the day.  Sunday morning he managed to squeeze onto the 6:30 bus where it was standing room only.  And the crowding didn't stop there: for the first lift line of the day, both the singles line and the main corral were stretched up the hill, past the Wildcat chair lift (photo below).  It was a 45 minute line for that first chair.

And it was barely worth the effort, he said later, noting that it was possibly the worst day of the season.  Flat light, crazy windy, super crowded, rain starting midday and really heavy snow that got pushed into huge bumps by run #2 - and you couldn't see those bumps because of the flat light.  (Yet another day that A wouldn't have liked.)  He had been intending to take the 2:09 bus down-canyon but when the rain started, he sprinted for the 1:09 instead, nabbing one of only five seats available.  Seems like he wasn't alone in calling it a [grey, soggy] day.

#iykyk but an aerial shot of these lines would be impressive

Meanwhile, down in the valley, Milton and I had a fairly productive weekend.  Thanks to our new Garmin watch, we finally know that our Dimple Dell loop is 4.8 miles: we did that loop both Saturday and Sunday, getting to meet friendly dogs each time.  Saturday it was supposed to be raining but wasn't; Sunday was terrifically windy.  Personally, I prefer rain to wind.  In addition to our walks, we made chili and a Korean kimchi stew, chocolate chip cookies, 4+ quarts of vegetable broth and an apple galette, plus tried a new baked oatmeal recipe and went to the local library.